We've mentioned before that Intel has no intentions of significantly ramping
up the clock speed of their Pentium 4 processor until the second half of this
year when they introduce the first 90nm Prescott core. The move to 90nm will
provide for smaller, faster and cooler running transistors that will enable
clock speeds of greater than 3.2GHz with relative ease (compared to on the current
130nm core), but until that time comes Intel is relying on improvements on the
platform side of things to keep performance competitive.

Eventually the C designation will fade away, but we're stuck with it initially
in order to remove any confusion when customers see two identically clocked
processors with different FSB frequencies. You actually won't have to deal with
that confusion for another several weeks, as the first and only 800MHz FSB Pentium
4 processor being released at this time doesn't overlap in clock speed with
any other Pentium 4.

The first 800MHz FSB CPU from Intel is the Pentium 4 3.0C which, as you can
probably guess, runs at an even 3GHz - just 66MHz shy of the previous champ.
There will be other 800MHz FSB processors to come, both lower and higher clocked
than today's 3.0C, but for now this is all Intel is introducing.

Other than 800MHz FSB support, these new C processors will feature Hyper Threading
(HT) and sell for a slight premium ($20 - $40) over other non-HT Pentium 4's
courtesy of the improved performance provided by HT.

We've already provided quite a bit of information on the platform that Intel
is launching with the Pentium 4 3.0C, so be sure to read
our 875P review to get the details before continuing with this review.

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3 Comments

Umm...right whatever, at least we can spend $2000 and get a powerful monster where as you get a let me see...133Mhz G3?! (OK, that's pushing it but you get the idea.) Besides, I might get a 3.0C Pentium-IV! BUAHAHHAH!Reply